


Her Family (Chosen)

by thatsrightdollface



Series: KamiHaji Week 2018 [2]
Category: Kamisama Hajimemashita | Kamisama Kiss
Genre: Babysitting, Family, Fluff, Gen, KamiHaji Week 2018, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15680166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: As a part of Nanami’s chosen family, it probably makes sense Mizuki winds up looking after her kid some of the time.  Like today, for example.  Nanami’s son is in the school play, and Mizuki’s supposed to record it for when she and Tomoe get back from a trip!





	Her Family (Chosen)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Hello, and thank you for reading~ :D  
> 2\. This story was also written for KamiHaji Week 2018, on tumblr!  
> 3\. I'm sorry for anything I got tangled/messed up.  
> 4\. I hope your day/night is going wonderfully so far!! Whenever you're reading this notes section, you know. :P

Back when Mizuki had tended his first goddess’s shrine – back when he’d only ever served that Lady Yonomori, the playful and radiant force he’d been dreamt up and hatched for – he’d never expected to be called anybody’s “uncle.”  He’d been busy with sacred sake and dipping long, impossibly pale fingers into the cold of river water, whispering it clean and bright again.  He’d had his place; he’d calmed storms and helped his goddess fish drowning humans out of the deep whenever they tumbled in somehow.  Humans had seemed baffled and shivering to Mizuki, on the whole, back then.  They were funny and quick-lived, afraid of so many things.  That was okay!  Mizuki was there to protect, of course.  They gave his goddess offerings and sang her praises, so of course he was there to protect.

Lady Yonomori and the shrine spirits had been all the family Mizuki had ever wanted, before their shrine was drowned.  Everything else had been so, so far away.

Not anymore.  Mizuki actually _was_ an uncle now, apparently, and it was a human girl’s child who had named him that.  Well, a human girl and the former wild fox who had somehow snuck his claws between her ribs and fished out a heart (metaphorically, of course.)  Nanami Momozono, and that Tomoe who’d shed his twitchy fox ears not too long ago.  It was important to Mizuki, being something like Nanami’s family.  Her son could call him whatever he wanted, to a point.

(The boy’s father _did_ put some weird, less-flattering nickname ideas in his head, now and then, but Nanami tended to stomp those right out.  Mizuki was always a little dazzled when she stood up for him, especially considering he’d been getting the kid to call his father some strange things, too.  Oops!

… She kind of stood up for everybody, though, that Nanami.  It was just one of those amazing things about her, like the way she tossed her head back laughing or managed to draw all of them close together again and again and again.)

Mizuki imagined Lady Yonomori would’ve been happy for him, now.  She might’ve teased him gently, too, seeing her familiar flopped over watching human television or reciting back equally human names in pieces of gossip he’d remembered Nanami telling him.  To make it clear he was keeping up with things, you know.  Nanami Momozono had been a land god when Mizuki met her, but she was as human as they came beneath all that holy glow.  And now she was human all the way through, though she didn’t feel far away at all.  Not the way humans always had before Mizuki’d really gotten to know any of them, anyway…  And _especially_ not now that she’d come back from her journeys in the mortal world.  Nanami’d finally come back to the Mikage Shrine, where she’d been a goddess, once.  Back into Mizuki’s day-to-day life, so that imagining the hallways and gardens without her felt like imagining them without air.

If Nanami didn’t want to kiss Mizuki and curl up under the fold of his arm at night, starlight cold on their skin…  (His scales, when you got down to it.  His scales and her soft, tangled hair) …  That was alright.  Of course, it had to be alright.  But he was still in family portraits, sometimes, now.  Nanami tugged him around by his sleeve, back-to-school shopping for her little boy.  She helped him weed the shrine’s gardens, chatting with him and telling stories about what working in a daycare had been like.  What the strangest things about renting an apartment had been; how much she’d missed him, her friend, her former familiar.  _Her family._

“You promise?” Mizuki had asked, the first time she’d said it.  That bit about missing him, not only sometimes but like a constant hum, like the way she carried her shadow around.  He really hoped his voice sounded coy instead of whiny, at least so far as Nanami was concerned.  Whatever Tomoe might’ve said about it didn’t matter so much.  (Mizuki could just imagine what Tomoe would say about his insecurities, honestly, and whatever it was would make him gasp in offense and exclaim, “Ah, Fox!  You’re _horrible_!” or something pretty much like that.  That was the way their game went, you know.)

It was just that Nanami had been gone a long, long time.  It was just that she’d chosen to go and make her own mortal way, and there was nothing he could do to stop her aging.  To stop her leaving, again, and sooner than she probably realized.

“Absolutely I promise,” Nanami had said, even so.  “Aw, don’t look so surprised.  Coming back here was coming _home_ , and you’re a part of that, Mizuki.”

Mizuki’s hands had been muddy from the garden, at that point, so he’d tipped his head over just a bit and rested it against Nanami’s shoulder.  He’d said something sweet and sing-song, and then something about how he’d even come visit her in a thousand smelly, too-fast human cities if he needed to.  He’d ride taxis, and climb underground to battle with trains.  Nanami was so, so warm, there in the garden, with a bit of dirt smudged on her cheek and a slight wind fiddling with her hair.  She was so, so warm just about all the time.  Mizuki was coldblooded, of course, and sometimes he wondered if he was almost jealous of the way age and smiles had started to show just a little at the edge of Tomoe’s eyes.

Tomoe was human now, too, strangely enough, and together all that mortal blood warmed up the shrine in a way Mizuki didn’t think they could really know.  That used-to-be-fox was still so handsome, Nanami said, and so it had to be true.  Unfortunately.

Nanami’s little son wore human school uniforms, already – he was growing up so fast! – and waved to spirits very politely on the road whatever else his classmates thought.  He was a loud kid, and generous like his mom…  And prone to grumpy, fastidious moods like his dad, too.  Mizuki was just about to bring him to his school’s class play, though of course doing something like that would’ve felt impossibly human, once.  Just like helping with an elementary school science project would’ve been impossibly human, and quizzing the little guy on dates for history exams, and smuggling him some money to buy trading cards.  Apparently that was all “uncle” stuff, and Mizuki was trying his best.  As long as he had a place in the family – and he _would_ , Nanami had promised him, a hand on his back and the garden all around them – he was gonna try his best.

And now… Nanami and Tomoe were out of town helping set up for a mutual friend’s wedding.  It wasn’t really strange at all, working to keep things running while they were away.  Mizuki had babysat for this kid so many times that the teachers already knew him as they made their way to the school auditorium.  People greeted him very nearly by name: “Mr. Yonomori,” they said, like they knew he was carrying his first goddess’s shrine with him even now.  Carrying his purpose with him, as he smiled with fangs most people couldn’t see.  They didn’t know that, though, of course.  They only knew the way Tomoe had grudgingly introduced him, saying he was a half-brother or something else that would explain their matching pale hair.

Maybe Mizuki had never expected to be anyone’s uncle – and he hadn’t, cross his river-cold heart – but he’d signed off on school permission slips for this kid before.  He was pretty good at a few of the video games the boy liked, and conceded gracefully whenever he lost at all those _other_ ones.  He knew a fair bit more about popular kids’ cartoons than most familiars who gathered at the Divine Assembly, though to be fair those other familiars probably didn’t get assigned babysitting duty nearly as often as _he_ did.

It wasn’t as if Mizuki minded, of course.  This was part of being Nanami’s family, so…  There you go.  This was part of being trusted, and belonging somewhere beyond a waterlogged shrine he’d lost too, too long before.  Mizuki was going to record the whole show on a borrowed video camera, so Nanami and Tomoe could see it when they got back.  He’d helped their son practice his lines on the way over to the school – chirping them back and forth along the road, balancing an umbrella so it successfully shielded both the boy and that video camera from the rain.  Mizuki preferred walking in the rain, honestly.  It traced cryptic patterns across his cheek, and the sky was milky pale and looked soft – softer than the school auditorium seats would be, anyway.  Those things squeaked, always, and the scratchy fabric of them felt like old carpet.  Mizuki’d been by for the school’s talent show already, and an incredibly long seminar he and Nanami’d had to keep prodding each other awake through about Fostering Positive Study Habits at Home.

Nanami’s son walked Mizuki to his seat before scurrying back behind the curtain to get ready for the show.  He had costumes to put on – the Huntsman who got the Big Bad Wolf in one act, Mizuki knew for sure.  (And he’d make sure Tomoe got the irony of _that_ just as soon as he could manage it.)  The kid had friends to greet, too, and juice boxes to fish out of the drama teacher’s cooler.  He’d probably have to sign his name somewhere to check in, or something, though if he forgot Mizuki would just slither back in later and forge it for him.  No big deal.

But before he went, Nanami’s son perched in the chair next to Mizuki’s, swinging his shoes against the seat in front of them.  His eyebrows were scrunched up a little, like Nanami’s had gotten sometimes when she was digging her way through an especially frustrating pile of homework.  Like they got sometimes, now, too, when she was concerned about a parking ticket she’d gotten, or trying to figure out where in any of the realms she could’ve lost her purse.  You know, the cute one with the pastel flowers.  It had _everything_ in it!

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Mizuki asked, hoping to smooth the poor kid’s expression out at least a little bit.  This wasn’t the sort of voice he would’ve used calling to a human floundering in the cold fast river running by Yonomori Shrine, mind you.  He wasn’t wearing an especially beatific smile; he wasn’t about to offer a goddess’s blessing, or reveal any of his true water snake-ish identity there in the elementary school.  This was an easy, gentle voice, though, and one that came so naturally to him, now.  _Uncle Mizuki.  Mr. Yonomori._   The child had never known him as anything but this.

“Do you think I’ll mess up?” Nanami’s little boy asked.  “I have a lot of lines, near the end.  Do you think I’ve got them all?”

Mizuki nodded, very seriously.  “Oh, yes,” he said.

“You promise?” Nanami’s son asked, then, and in that moment…  Despite how their blood was nothing alike, despite how quickly humans changed and moved on from that world…  Mizuki thought he heard a lot of his own voice, there, mirrored back to him.  Something the child had learned.  Learned from family, right?  From someone Nanami had chosen, in whatever context she’d chosen him.  From someone she’d prepared extra food for before leaving on her trip – though of course she knew he could hunt for himself, and probably wouldn’t try feeding her child any squirming lizards again – and someone she worried over when he got sick, and someone she might’ve been missing even right that second.

“Of course,” Mizuki assured the kid.  “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

They linked pinkies on that one – a sort of promise, as Mizuki understood it.  The solemn vow of the human classroom, or something like that.  Nanami’s child always looked very stern, making vows.

Back when Mizuki had tended his first goddess’s shrine – back when he’d only ever served that Lady Yonomori and had imagined she would be his whole world for all eternity – Mizuki had thought he’d known what any sort of family he could ever have would look like.  He knew a bit better now, though, didn’t he?  Maybe Lady Yonomori herself wouldn’t have been too surprised, imagining him here.  Maybe she would’ve smiled, sort of sad, sort of proud.

Maybe she would’ve reminded him to call out, “Ah!  Remember to wave for the camera, too!  Just a little wave.  Let’s make sure your mom knows you thought about her, okay?” or something, before Nanami’s son hurried too far out of earshot.

Mizuki liked to think she would’ve reminded him, you know?


End file.
